When I began searching for my Muse I had no idea that she was also hunting me.I believe that all of us have inner characters that dramatically influence our daily lives. Usually they remain in the unconscious and can only be found when we project them, with great emotional intensity, onto the innocents that surround us.For a true artist, staying alive means staying creative. So naturally I am interested in keeping my creative fountain full. As have many male artists historically, I experience its source as a beautiful, virginal woman: my Muse. But she had wanted to be recognized so badly for so long that when I finally did approach her, what I found was a Muse with an agenda!For nearly a year she locked me in an intense struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible magic of human creativity, the very power that makes us "images" of God. Seized with great emotional tempests, like Odysseus sailing into Sirens, I could release the pressure of experiencing that fiercely Beautiful Song either by jumping overboard (psychosis) or by singing back. Thank God for art. (And for my patient family!) I sang with all my heart, in every medium I could bring to bear.These drawings and notes are the footprints of my struggle. It is wholly material of my

private process, and was never meant to be shared, let alone exhibited publicly. This exhibit came about at the urging of several close friends whom I'd allowed to see some of the drawings. I offer it in the hope that it may illuminate God's mysterious, erotic and frightening gift of unbearable Beauty, that amazing fount of inspiration that brought our species to the evolutionary throne and continues to deliver us from what might otherwise be a deadly, mechanized approach to the problems of existence.